


ever the survivor

by whatsarasays



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, F/M, Leon-centric, Post-Resident Evil: Vendetta, Survivor Guilt, safe house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 01:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18228128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsarasays/pseuds/whatsarasays
Summary: They praise his tenacity and determination.Laud him for making his own goddamn miracles.In reality, he just doesn’t know how to choke-out the instinct to get back up.





	ever the survivor

He gets his leg kicked in.

It buckles without preamble, leaving him with an obliterated kneecap and collateral ligament damage. The injuries have been stacking for years, but this one causes the entire pile to tumble. If he were still twenty-one — all fresh-faced and baby-cheeked — he might have been optimistic about recovery, but when the surgeon doesn’t slap him on the back like he usually does, he knows better. A flimsy x-ray is thrust onto a backlight. It illuminates a thousand problems and a truth: he doesn’t have a plan for this.

Didn’t think he’d need one.

He expected to go out sooner.

The days become a blurry crawl of repetitious exercises and physical therapy appointments. He would call it meditative if he did any thinking, but he doesn't. It is lost time. The doctors praise his tenacity and determination and laud him for making his own goddamn miracle when he learns to walk again.  
  
In reality, he just doesn’t know how to choke-out the instinct to get back up.

\---

Everything goes to shit in fresh ways. It was already festering and rotted but breaking reports of riots and rebellions and exposés of exploitations and perjury are a deluge in his news feed. Leaks uncover a toxic growth beneath the floorboards of the Whitehouse. The viruses he’s fought for decades were a feint while the blight of corruption spread across the upper brass.

They give him a medal for his service.

He tosses out it with the leftovers.

\---

He buys a house.

A bungalow tucked between the fingers of the Alleghenies. It needs fixing, but as much as he compulsively dismembers his guns and snaps them back together, he’s a terrible handyman. The siding is sliding away and the window frames are bowed from the humid heat of too many summers. The front lawn is a scape of withered, corn silk grass. But it sits within a clearing of chestnuts, white pines, and sugar maples, and has a sturdy fence around the border.

Claire visits to lend a hand with repairs and fills the house with cheerful chatter. She is a songbird, warbling her excitement over his homestead, harrowing spring into its halls. Her music is full of encouragement over his newfound domesticity. It is abruptly halted when she steps out onto the back porch.

She stares out at the small brood, “Chickens, Leon?” Their clucks echo in the haunted, empty space of her confusion.

Hands in his pockets, he sheepishly shrugs, leans against the swinging door, and offers no explanation.

“Chickens,” Claire whispers to herself as she attempts to decipher their meaning.

Everything is teetering at the edge of awful and his intuition is whirling and pinging and blaring about its impending plunge but he cannot stand longer than a handful of minutes, much less run, so: chickens.

Sherry plants posies of herbs in the front garden.

\---

He watches the news standing in the middle of his living room with a two-finger pour of Pappy Van Winkle. Footage of the attack on D.C. streams across the screen. He presses mute and silences the babbling of horrified anchormen. The detonation pretends a false dawn over the Washington skyline. It is ruinous in its beauty and he’s relieved that for once he isn’t there to see the destruction in person.

Bile burns at the back of his throat.

It has nothing to do with the alcohol.

He checks his phone. There are a hundred texts from Claire. He swipes through them, dragging his thumb across the screen. She is begging him to join her and Sherry in Oregon. If he starts driving now, he might get there before they shutter the roads completely. Chris is deployed to God knows where.

He shifts his weight and feels the bite of the leg brace beneath his trousers. He is bound by pins and alloys and surgical plastic.

He shoots off a text to Sherry instead. Says he proud of her.

After he taps send, his phone flashes the alert that his connection has been lost.

\---

The next morning, he is roused by a vehicle grinding down the gravel driveway. He surges up from the sofa, phone clattering to the floor. He fishes out the shotgun from beneath the coffee table and slides eight rounds into the magazine tunnel with steady hands. Pumping the action, he feels the bolt push a cartridge into the chamber.

He limps to the door and braces himself before throwing it open.

His breath hitches when he sees a lithe woman with a black bob between the beads of the sight. He swallows in disbelief. Slowly lowering the weapon, he flicks the safety on and swings it across his shoulder. He watches as she slams the trunk closed and rounds the back of the car with a military-grade rucksack in each hand.

They only see each other is when the world is about to end and now is no exception.

Ada Wong is not wearing red and lacks her usual makeup, but then again, there’s no reason for her to play the femme fatale anymore. Any need for pretense is gone. There are now no allegiances except the ones they make for themselves.

But he knows he is the only thing she has ever shown any real fealty toward anyway.

“They bombed New York this morning. L.A. will probably be next,” she reports as if she were telling him about the weather. Low-heeled boots clack against the wooden planks of the front porch as she comes to stand before him. She drops the duffle bags, which declare her intention to stay at long, long last.

Leon extends an arm, wide hand enveloping her waist, and lets himself feel that she’s real. He drags her against him as she reaches up to cradle his head. Burying his face in the crook of her neck, he noses against the scar on her clavicle and chokes on the irony with bile still burning at the back of his throat,

“Lucky us.”

 


End file.
